MockingBird
Hero
I can only speak on my own experience. When 4e came out I had a group of mostly new players and they did not like it. They were overwhelmed with character creation and did not enjoy the combat. We gave it several tries, even finished Keep on the Shadowfell, but it just wasn't well received with them.We don’t know that. 4e didn’t grow as quickly as WotC needed it to, but we have no evidence that the writing was at fault for that. Indeed, what we do know is that 4e was incredibly popular with new players, but the loss of old players created a bottleneck to entry. What this suggests is that the biggest problem was that their early marketing decisions made long-time players feel snubbed.
EDIT: I also don’t think “dry” is a fair characterization of 4e’s presentation. 4e was full of flavor, it was just more technical than previous editions had been.